Provincetown police station vote deferred

PROVINCETOWN — A proposal for a new police station will not be on the special or annual town meeting warrants in April, but it may come by the fall.

By MARY ANN BRAGG

capecodtimes.com

By MARY ANN BRAGG

Posted Feb. 21, 2013 at 2:00 AM
Updated Feb 22, 2013 at 12:26 AM

By MARY ANN BRAGG

Posted Feb. 21, 2013 at 2:00 AM
Updated Feb 22, 2013 at 12:26 AM

» Social News

PROVINCETOWN — A proposal for a new police station will not be on the special or annual town meeting warrants in April, but it may come by the fall.

The selectmen and the building committee agreed informally Tuesday to defer making a multimillion-dollar proposal to town meeting voters April 1 because more research, thought and answers are needed.

"There's still a lot of questions from the public about the whole process," Austin Knight, chairman of the board of selectmen, said Wednesday. "The building committee is doing a tremendous job. We don't want to undermine that. We want to keep the process going for the summer."

The five-member building committee's task is to recommend to the selectmen a police station site and a design that will economically meet the needs of the community, now and in the future, according to the town's website.

"I think the general consensus is that we're not quite ready," Thomas Coen, building committee chairman, said Wednesday.

At a minimum, the committee needs to continue gathering information and do more public education, Coen said.

The selectmen also are still considering locations for the new facility, Knight said.

In a 2009 assessment of the current 6,000-square-foot police station at 26 Shank Painter Road, consultants at the Center for Public Safety Inc. and Architects Design Group Inc. identified critical deficiencies in prisoner unloading and booking areas and in the building's electrical wiring and safety standards. Police Chief Jeff Jaran sought the study and paid for it from the police department's drug forfeiture money fund.

"There is not one mechanical system that functions properly," Jaran has said about the former funeral home, which was built in 1975 and converted to a police station in 1984.

The current station is not big enough for what is needed and sits on land that could flood, Coen said. The department employs 20 full-time officers and hires an additional 14-15 summer officers.

Since the 2009 assessment, town officials have wrangled with the question of where to build a new station and how big should it be. The location continues to be a question, although in the last two years the selectmen's focus was mainly on the department of public works highway garage at 24 Race Point Road.

But the estimated $14.6 million price tag to tear down that garage and put a new structure on the property caused such public consternation when presented last year that town officials deferred a special town meeting warrant article that would have moved the project forward.

Finance committee Chairman Tom Donegan said Wednesday that the selectmen haven't set any financial constraints on the building committee's research, which Donegan said should consider "the cost to the town and how much we can afford." Donegan said the selectmen need to improve how they communicate about coming capital projects such as the police station.

"Everyone wants the best police station possible; it's a question of how much can we afford," he said.